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Microsoft doing shady stuff again. It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large

Microsoft doing shady stuff again. It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large is amazing. But then some Product Management division decides to shove this shit down people's throat and, for me at least, ruins all the fun of what would is otherwise an amazing piece of an operating system. I paid for an operating system, just let me use the damn thing in peace will you ...

tracker1 7y ago
I feel largely the same... they build some really cool things, and developer division, the azure guys and .net core guys I've talked to are all great... why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things, I don't get. Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble... no need to disparage anything, it'd be more assertive and less annoying at the same time.
- oblio 7y ago
  > Why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things, I don't get. It smells of desperation on the product management side of things. They can't show growth anymore. I'm not saying they should just give up, but folks, be a bit more dignified over there. Your company's doing great and Windows still does a pretty decent job in many places, cut the crap... At some point you have to accept that Windows is the mature partner, not the hot 20-year old :-D
- Kwantuum 7y ago
  > put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble [...] less annoying I have to disagree here. Messing with people's pinned taskbar icons is much more intrusive than a suggestion (which anyone sane has already disabled) > why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things I'm sorry but that's pretty funny right before suggesting to literally change users settings without their consent.
  - brianzelip 7y ago
    Perhaps the grandparent was referring to doing all that, by default out of the box? Sounds like a nice compromise all around.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I'm not suggesting changing the default browser... only that given some of their past actions, simply putting the icon, or updating the version of Edge on the taskbar, and having a notification above that icon would be a better approach. Compared to the suggestion that disparages Firefox or Chrome, or the full browser window opening after the update. -- edit It's easier to unpin a taskbar icon, than disable suggestions.
  - usrusr 7y ago
    That would be true if the ad/"suggestion" was just positively touting Edge without negatively mentioning Firefox. Is it even legal to use a competitor's trademark like that?
    - lordlimecat 7y ago
      You are allowed to criticize trademarked products by name, as long as you're not saying demonstrably false things or misusing / misattributing the trademark.
- robbyt 7y ago
  Great people don't work at crappy companies.
  - galangalalgol 7y ago
    I have heard second hand that the devtools group is practically a separate company.
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      What does their paycheck say?
  - New_Horizon 7y ago
    That's a pretty silly idea. So anyone working for Walmart is a monster? Can't be a good person and just taking the best job you can find for yourself and your family?
    - Nullabillity 7y ago
      The grocery store employment market is pretty different from the sw engineer market. I'd be far more comfortable judging someone's choices when they.. have a realistic alternative.
      - tracker1 7y ago
        You cannot effectively influence change in a community you aren't a part of.
    - BenjiWiebe 7y ago
      One data point, I don't believe I'm a monster, but I do enjoy my Walmart job.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    And what are the alternatives? Seriously, you cannot name any company with over a hundred employees that has never done something you would disagree with. Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Cisco all have baggage... Not to mention the financial institutions... if you take away all the largest employers that would effectively flood the rest of the market and cut your pay in roughly half because of the competition. The comment, and sentiment are imho very ignorant and childish. Beyond this, rarely can someone make effective change to a community you are not a part of, let alone disdain.
- derefr 7y ago
  > Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble... Ah, but some users don’t even use the taskbar. They want this ad to be visible to their tablet market, too. And for screen-reader users, presumably. Microsoft seems like the kind of company to be concerned about the accessibility of their ads.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> Microsoft doing shady stuff again. Seems anything but shady? On the start menu in full sight and just explicitly suggesting their browser over Firefox. Doesn't even claim anything about either browser, just suggests theirs! Seems as honest and upfront as any advertising could be? 'Try our band of coffee' effectively.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  It's advertising. Smack bang in the middle of the OS you paid hundreds for.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    I get people don't want it. But it's the least 'shady' advertising I've seen in years!
    - Avamander 7y ago
      Doesn't still make it okay.
    - stanski 7y ago
      Any advertising that's badmouthing another product is shady. I don't know what advertising you've been seeing that's so much worse.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        ‘Are you still drinking coffee brand A? Try coffee brand B!’ Seems almost comically benign, 50s-style advertising to my ears.
        anoncake 7y ago
        If Microsoft had run that ad in the usual places accessible to everyone that can afford it there would not be much outrage.
madeofpalk 7y ago
Tasteless maybe, but I don't think it's shady.
- woofie11 7y ago
  Microsoft went through an extended process with the DOJ about almost this exact thing in the day of Netscape Navigator -- using market power in operating systems to try to gain advantage in the browser market. That's unethical and generally illegal under antitrust law.
  - jevgeni 7y ago
    Key point: at that time. It’s not an absolute.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      Didn't the agreement they had only (finally) run out a year or two ago, thus setting the stage for MS to start pulling this crap again?
despera 7y ago
"Again"? When did they stop? You mean that hypocritical "MS loves Linux" stuff while their partners are digging the grave for FOSS like in Munich?
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  Saying "again" has zero bearing on frequency, unless you mean to suggest that every single action that MS and it's individual employees take are "shady stuff," continuously, without exception.
  - despera 7y ago
    Of course it does involve frequency, "again" can either mean something that's happening very often OR something that stopped happening and started again. It's a matter of corporate strategy and has nothing to do with each worker.
  - Psyladine 7y ago
    >every single action It doesn't have to suggest all actions, only re-occurring behavior. Microsoft had a well deserved reputation as a grim reaper in the tech industry. http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepape...
    - IggleSniggle 7y ago
      I agree! The person I was responding to reacted to "again" as if a behavior needs to "stop" in order for it to happen "again." It doesn't. It only needs to be reoccurring.
smoyer 7y ago
Plus the latest versions of Edge are built on Chromium ... are they going to advertise against that too?
Delmania 7y ago
How is this shady compared to Google's ads for Chrome on google.com or the paid search results in the App Store? All the tech giants participate in this behavior.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  > How is this shady Largely because it's Microsoft. Everyone else does cross promotion of their products but some people hold a special place in their heart for hating on Microsoft. It usually manifests itself with frothing at the mouth, exposition about how they were sued as a monopoly, and they're the devil. It's as if Microsoft was breaking into homes in the 90s and swapping your Macs out for PCs. Someone will respond to this post with a laundry list of complaints about them that they've had saved off in a .txt to counter posts like this.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    I've never had google ads randomly pop up on my desktop environment. When that starts happening, maybe you have a point.
    - scumbert 7y ago
      Google lives in a browser. Your average consumer's computing rarely leaves the browser today. Apples to oranges.
      - jevgeni 7y ago
        And probably due to that GOOG’s tracking is way more intrusive. But yeah, the bandwagon isn’t going to jump on itself.
      - celticmusic 7y ago
        claiming it doesn't make it so.
    - cptskippy 7y ago
      > my desktop environment. Is your desktop environment Chrome OS? Do you get Microsoft ads whenever you visit google.com from the Chrome Web Browser?
braythwayt 7y ago
Microsoft doing shady stuff again. It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large is amazing. This has been Microsoft forever. They have always made some good things, but from a business perspective, they've always been parasitoids. They infect you, then eventually consume you from the inside-out. THAT is their DNA. And so far, I have seen zero indication they've changed.
- randiantech 7y ago
  Thats the DNA of pretty much any profit based oganization.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    One that isn’t true and two these comments are thought terminating. Please be more careful next time.
    - switchbak 7y ago
      Maybe I'm getting old, but there's a real arrogance to telling someone how they should think. Why not tell them why you think they're wrong (and leave it up to them to change), instead of making naked assertions and telling them to change?
      - maw 7y ago
        Hey, at least you're not being told how you do think.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    If you over-generalize, sure. But different corporations are selfish/ruthless/exploitative in different ways, and organizing our thinking about the ways in which a for-profit organization acts selfishly/ruthlessly/exploitatively helps us make our own decisions and craft our own strategies for getting what we want from them, or choosing with whom we do business.
EasyTiger_ 7y ago
In the UK a retail Windows 10 Pro licence costs a whopping £219.99 - and even after that you still have to contend with this shit.
WaylonKenning 7y ago
Yeah, like with iOS, where there's all sorts of special treatment for Apple apps versus third party apps.
derefr 7y ago
> I paid for an operating system Mind you, most Windows home users haven’t paid for an operating system. Either because they’re pirating Windows (e.g. most of the Asian market) or because they’re using an OEM license that Microsoft sold basically at cost (after CapEx:OpEx conversion of R&D expense, ala pharma companies.) The only profit “Windows” as a product makes, at this point, is 1. Whatever tie-in channel partnerships they can sneak in (like the Candy Crush ad in the start menu), and 2. The cross-department budget Windows gets from Azure as lead-gen revenue (given that Windows is gradually becoming ever more tightly integrated with the Azure SDK, such that it’s only natural to use Azure to build a backend for a Windows app.)
- Octoth0rpe 7y ago
  > because they’re pirating Windows With you so far... > because they’re using an OEM license ... which they paid for. If MS is undercharging for those OEM licenses (that is, sum of R&D costs/ongoing maintenance costs is lower than sum of sale prices), that doesn't mean the OEM (by extension, the user) didn't pay for it.
geddy 7y ago
>I paid for an operating system, just let me use the damn thing in peace will you It's always been about control. You can apply this to damn-near everything too. "I paid for an operating system, let me use it as I see fit" "I paid for an internet connection, let me use it how I want" "I paid for a laptop, let me upgrade the RAM" "I paid for a phone, let me install whatever apps I choose / let me replace the battery" etc etc. It's everything infuriating about modern computing in a nutshell. Every company wants absolute control over everything you do. And if they can't have that, they want _data_ on everything you do.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  You use to always be able to buy aftermarket parts for a car. Now try buying parts for a Tesla to repair it yourself. It's literally impossible. It's just as bad as trying to get replacements for Apple parts. It's bullshit.
djsumdog 7y ago
I want to see Windows 11. I would rater pay for a new product update than just have Win 10 forever with ads and tracking. Microsoft stop this bullshit. In my world, your OS is good for one thing: gaming. Even then I have to install an outbound Firewall controller (currently Windows 10 Firewall Control) and spend an hour trying to disable all your shitty adds and phone-home and Cortana rubbish! My Linux box is what I use for anything important. Microsoft could probably charge an extra $60 for an ad-free, privacy-aware consumer version of Windows 11 and make a considerable amount off that audience. But right now, there is no choice.
- jmnicolas 7y ago
  I'd pay up to 500€ for a 100% telemetry / ad free version of Windows.
  - gruez 7y ago
    If the Bavarian agency for data protection is to be believed, you can fully disable telemetry in the enterprise/education version ($300/license). https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/02/german-data-protection-agency-windows-10-1909-enterprise-telemetry-can-be-fully-disabled/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/02/german-data-protection-age...
    - lordlimecat 7y ago
      Those allow you to set telemetry to "0- Security" via gpo. This notably does not disable telemetry phone homes on either edu or Enterprise SKUs. It reduces it, but there is still an awful lot sent back to MS.
    - jmnicolas 7y ago
      I tried to look for the enterprise version a few years back. It is unobtainium unless you're buying a few thousand of them.
      - gruez 7y ago
        Have you tried resellers? eg. https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-upgrade-license-1-license/5301533 https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-... Also, I've heard that if you need to comply with volume licensing requirements (ie. minimum 5/25 products), you can buy a bunch of cheap CAL licenses.

tracker1 7y ago

I feel largely the same... they build some really cool things, and developer division, the azure guys and .net core guys I've talked to are all great... why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things, I don't get. Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble... no need to disparage anything, it'd be more assertive and less annoying at the same time.

oblio 7y ago
> Why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things, I don't get. It smells of desperation on the product management side of things. They can't show growth anymore. I'm not saying they should just give up, but folks, be a bit more dignified over there. Your company's doing great and Windows still does a pretty decent job in many places, cut the crap... At some point you have to accept that Windows is the mature partner, not the hot 20-year old :-D
Kwantuum 7y ago
> put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble [...] less annoying I have to disagree here. Messing with people's pinned taskbar icons is much more intrusive than a suggestion (which anyone sane has already disabled) > why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things I'm sorry but that's pretty funny right before suggesting to literally change users settings without their consent.
- brianzelip 7y ago
  Perhaps the grandparent was referring to doing all that, by default out of the box? Sounds like a nice compromise all around.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tracker1 7y ago
  I'm not suggesting changing the default browser... only that given some of their past actions, simply putting the icon, or updating the version of Edge on the taskbar, and having a notification above that icon would be a better approach. Compared to the suggestion that disparages Firefox or Chrome, or the full browser window opening after the update. -- edit It's easier to unpin a taskbar icon, than disable suggestions.
- usrusr 7y ago
  That would be true if the ad/"suggestion" was just positively touting Edge without negatively mentioning Firefox. Is it even legal to use a competitor's trademark like that?
  - lordlimecat 7y ago
    You are allowed to criticize trademarked products by name, as long as you're not saying demonstrably false things or misusing / misattributing the trademark.
robbyt 7y ago
Great people don't work at crappy companies.
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  I have heard second hand that the devtools group is practically a separate company.
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    What does their paycheck say?
- New_Horizon 7y ago
  That's a pretty silly idea. So anyone working for Walmart is a monster? Can't be a good person and just taking the best job you can find for yourself and your family?
  - Nullabillity 7y ago
    The grocery store employment market is pretty different from the sw engineer market. I'd be far more comfortable judging someone's choices when they.. have a realistic alternative.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      You cannot effectively influence change in a community you aren't a part of.
  - BenjiWiebe 7y ago
    One data point, I don't believe I'm a monster, but I do enjoy my Walmart job.
- tracker1 7y ago
  And what are the alternatives? Seriously, you cannot name any company with over a hundred employees that has never done something you would disagree with. Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Cisco all have baggage... Not to mention the financial institutions... if you take away all the largest employers that would effectively flood the rest of the market and cut your pay in roughly half because of the competition. The comment, and sentiment are imho very ignorant and childish. Beyond this, rarely can someone make effective change to a community you are not a part of, let alone disdain.
derefr 7y ago
> Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble... Ah, but some users don’t even use the taskbar. They want this ad to be visible to their tablet market, too. And for screen-reader users, presumably. Microsoft seems like the kind of company to be concerned about the accessibility of their ads.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> Microsoft doing shady stuff again. Seems anything but shady? On the start menu in full sight and just explicitly suggesting their browser over Firefox. Doesn't even claim anything about either browser, just suggests theirs! Seems as honest and upfront as any advertising could be? 'Try our band of coffee' effectively.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
It's advertising. Smack bang in the middle of the OS you paid hundreds for.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  I get people don't want it. But it's the least 'shady' advertising I've seen in years!
  - Avamander 7y ago
    Doesn't still make it okay.
  - stanski 7y ago
    Any advertising that's badmouthing another product is shady. I don't know what advertising you've been seeing that's so much worse.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      ‘Are you still drinking coffee brand A? Try coffee brand B!’ Seems almost comically benign, 50s-style advertising to my ears.
      - anoncake 7y ago
        If Microsoft had run that ad in the usual places accessible to everyone that can afford it there would not be much outrage.

madeofpalk 7y ago

Tasteless maybe, but I don't think it's shady.

woofie11 7y ago
Microsoft went through an extended process with the DOJ about almost this exact thing in the day of Netscape Navigator -- using market power in operating systems to try to gain advantage in the browser market. That's unethical and generally illegal under antitrust law.
- jevgeni 7y ago
  Key point: at that time. It’s not an absolute.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Didn't the agreement they had only (finally) run out a year or two ago, thus setting the stage for MS to start pulling this crap again?

despera 7y ago

"Again"? When did they stop? You mean that hypocritical "MS loves Linux" stuff while their partners are digging the grave for FOSS like in Munich?

IggleSniggle 7y ago
Saying "again" has zero bearing on frequency, unless you mean to suggest that every single action that MS and it's individual employees take are "shady stuff," continuously, without exception.
- despera 7y ago
  Of course it does involve frequency, "again" can either mean something that's happening very often OR something that stopped happening and started again. It's a matter of corporate strategy and has nothing to do with each worker.
- Psyladine 7y ago
  >every single action It doesn't have to suggest all actions, only re-occurring behavior. Microsoft had a well deserved reputation as a grim reaper in the tech industry. http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepape...
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    I agree! The person I was responding to reacted to "again" as if a behavior needs to "stop" in order for it to happen "again." It doesn't. It only needs to be reoccurring.

smoyer 7y ago

Plus the latest versions of Edge are built on Chromium ... are they going to advertise against that too?

Delmania 7y ago

How is this shady compared to Google's ads for Chrome on google.com or the paid search results in the App Store? All the tech giants participate in this behavior.

cptskippy 7y ago
> How is this shady Largely because it's Microsoft. Everyone else does cross promotion of their products but some people hold a special place in their heart for hating on Microsoft. It usually manifests itself with frothing at the mouth, exposition about how they were sued as a monopoly, and they're the devil. It's as if Microsoft was breaking into homes in the 90s and swapping your Macs out for PCs. Someone will respond to this post with a laundry list of complaints about them that they've had saved off in a .txt to counter posts like this.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  I've never had google ads randomly pop up on my desktop environment. When that starts happening, maybe you have a point.
  - scumbert 7y ago
    Google lives in a browser. Your average consumer's computing rarely leaves the browser today. Apples to oranges.
    - jevgeni 7y ago
      And probably due to that GOOG’s tracking is way more intrusive. But yeah, the bandwagon isn’t going to jump on itself.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      claiming it doesn't make it so.
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    > my desktop environment. Is your desktop environment Chrome OS? Do you get Microsoft ads whenever you visit google.com from the Chrome Web Browser?

braythwayt 7y ago

Microsoft doing shady stuff again. It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large is amazing. This has been Microsoft forever. They have always made some good things, but from a business perspective, they've always been parasitoids. They infect you, then eventually consume you from the inside-out. THAT is their DNA. And so far, I have seen zero indication they've changed.

randiantech 7y ago
Thats the DNA of pretty much any profit based oganization.
- sitkack 7y ago
  One that isn’t true and two these comments are thought terminating. Please be more careful next time.
  - switchbak 7y ago
    Maybe I'm getting old, but there's a real arrogance to telling someone how they should think. Why not tell them why you think they're wrong (and leave it up to them to change), instead of making naked assertions and telling them to change?
    - maw 7y ago
      Hey, at least you're not being told how you do think.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- braythwayt 7y ago
  If you over-generalize, sure. But different corporations are selfish/ruthless/exploitative in different ways, and organizing our thinking about the ways in which a for-profit organization acts selfishly/ruthlessly/exploitatively helps us make our own decisions and craft our own strategies for getting what we want from them, or choosing with whom we do business.

EasyTiger_ 7y ago

In the UK a retail Windows 10 Pro licence costs a whopping £219.99 - and even after that you still have to contend with this shit.

WaylonKenning 7y ago

Yeah, like with iOS, where there's all sorts of special treatment for Apple apps versus third party apps.

derefr 7y ago

> I paid for an operating system Mind you, most Windows home users haven’t paid for an operating system. Either because they’re pirating Windows (e.g. most of the Asian market) or because they’re using an OEM license that Microsoft sold basically at cost (after CapEx:OpEx conversion of R&D expense, ala pharma companies.) The only profit “Windows” as a product makes, at this point, is 1. Whatever tie-in channel partnerships they can sneak in (like the Candy Crush ad in the start menu), and 2. The cross-department budget Windows gets from Azure as lead-gen revenue (given that Windows is gradually becoming ever more tightly integrated with the Azure SDK, such that it’s only natural to use Azure to build a backend for a Windows app.)

Octoth0rpe 7y ago
> because they’re pirating Windows With you so far... > because they’re using an OEM license ... which they paid for. If MS is undercharging for those OEM licenses (that is, sum of R&D costs/ongoing maintenance costs is lower than sum of sale prices), that doesn't mean the OEM (by extension, the user) didn't pay for it.

geddy 7y ago

>I paid for an operating system, just let me use the damn thing in peace will you It's always been about control. You can apply this to damn-near everything too. "I paid for an operating system, let me use it as I see fit" "I paid for an internet connection, let me use it how I want" "I paid for a laptop, let me upgrade the RAM" "I paid for a phone, let me install whatever apps I choose / let me replace the battery" etc etc. It's everything infuriating about modern computing in a nutshell. Every company wants absolute control over everything you do. And if they can't have that, they want _data_ on everything you do.

djsumdog 7y ago
You use to always be able to buy aftermarket parts for a car. Now try buying parts for a Tesla to repair it yourself. It's literally impossible. It's just as bad as trying to get replacements for Apple parts. It's bullshit.

djsumdog 7y ago

I want to see Windows 11. I would rater pay for a new product update than just have Win 10 forever with ads and tracking. Microsoft stop this bullshit. In my world, your OS is good for one thing: gaming. Even then I have to install an outbound Firewall controller (currently Windows 10 Firewall Control) and spend an hour trying to disable all your shitty adds and phone-home and Cortana rubbish! My Linux box is what I use for anything important. Microsoft could probably charge an extra $60 for an ad-free, privacy-aware consumer version of Windows 11 and make a considerable amount off that audience. But right now, there is no choice.

jmnicolas 7y ago
I'd pay up to 500€ for a 100% telemetry / ad free version of Windows.
- gruez 7y ago
  If the Bavarian agency for data protection is to be believed, you can fully disable telemetry in the enterprise/education version ($300/license). https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/02/german-data-protection-agency-windows-10-1909-enterprise-telemetry-can-be-fully-disabled/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/02/german-data-protection-age...
  - lordlimecat 7y ago
    Those allow you to set telemetry to "0- Security" via gpo. This notably does not disable telemetry phone homes on either edu or Enterprise SKUs. It reduces it, but there is still an awful lot sent back to MS.
  - jmnicolas 7y ago
    I tried to look for the enterprise version a few years back. It is unobtainium unless you're buying a few thousand of them.
    - gruez 7y ago
      Have you tried resellers? eg. https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-upgrade-license-1-license/5301533 https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019-... Also, I've heard that if you need to comply with volume licensing requirements (ie. minimum 5/25 products), you can buy a bunch of cheap CAL licenses.